About the Discover Components App

The following information applies to version 5 of the Discover Components application.

The Discover Components application is a fundamental component of StorNext Connect. StorNext Connect cannot work without it. The application relies on one or more name servers as a starting point to look up hostnames of clients and volumes (file systems) (it does not scan client IP addresses and ports). From there, Discover Components works to identify the topology of the StorNext environment. You use this application to discover StorNext components and assign them to StorNext environments.

Rediscovery

After making any changes to client systems (starting or stopping StorNext, adding clients, updating or downgrading StorNext client software, and so on), you must Rediscover. This ensures StorNext Connect recognizes clients by their current StorNext software version. Failure to do this may report the software revision that was on the client before the upgrade/downgrade. Similarly, without rediscovery after environment changes, StorNext Connect might not recognize all hosts in the StorNext Connect workspace, in which case data for those hosts will not appear in the monitoring applications.

Discover Components Application Concepts

Quantum does not recommend entering StorNext clients as a name server in the Discover Components application. However, StorNext Connect does not restrict this configuration. When adding name server values in the Discover Components application, only enter the values contained in the fsnameservers file on the StorNext MDC/Xcellis Workflow Director for the workspace (cluster) containing that client.

When configuring a StorNext client, its fsnameservers file must include all of the same IP addresses included in the fsnameservers file on the MDC(s)/Workflow Director(s).

Note: It is important to make all the fsnameservers files identical for all StorNext MDCs and StorNext clients in the StorNext Connect workspace (cluster).

If a client mounts volumes (file systems) from two or more disjointed workspaces, the fsnameservers file for that client will not match the fsnameservers file used by the clients and MDCs in the StorNext Connect workspace. Configure and use all relevant MDC IP addresses to be used by the Discover Components application (primary and secondary nodes of dual-node systems). Failure to do so will cause any clients installed via StorNext Connect to only include the IP of the primary MDC in their fsnameservers file, and StorNext Connect may be unable to discover all components in the StorNext Connect workspace.

On the Discover Components application, you will see a message similar to the following example at the bottom of the page.

The note indicates the shared volume (file system) is available only for use by the StorNext MDC/Workflow Director HA pair, and is not mountable by any StorNext client. In this example, shared-AV1442CKB00310 is the name of the HA shared volume. For appliances, this name is based on the serial number of the appliance. For customer-supplied HA systems with a shared volume, this could be a different identifier.

When running the Discover Components application, it is possible for a StorNext MDC to be listed twice. This occurs when the client or MDC has both a public and private network IP address. If a host is listed twice, you will see both entries in the Manage Clients application as well. There are no issues with this; it is just a duplicate entry.

In the above example, the StorNext host named "sntestm660a.mdh.quantum.com" is shown once as an MDC and again as both a name server (NS) and an MDC.